


Don't Tell

by orphan_account



Series: Marauder's Era [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Dark Creatures, Death, Eileen Prince is an angel, Familial Love, Hogwarts, M/M, Marauders' Era, Mates, Poison, Severus Snape is a Werewolf, Severus is dying, St. Mungo's, Suicidal Thoughts, Tobias Snape is a piece of shit, Werewolf!Severus, Whipping, Wolfsbane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 07:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16280465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “There’s nowhere to go, Sev.” She spoke, holding his hand. “When you get your letter, the Hogwarts letter, you must not tell anyone what you are.” Severus had asked why. Surely not everyone was like his father? Not everyone was against that which was seen as ‘freakish’? “Just like how your father hates the strange and magical, the magical world hates people like us. Never give way to who you are, Severus. They’re terrible people who look down on anyone who isn’t like them. They dislike anyone who isn't pure.” Severus had nodded, promising to keep his secrets his and his mother, frail and sickly gave him a relieved smile.





	1. A Mothers Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s nowhere to go, Sev.” She spoke, holding his hand. “When you get your letter, the Hogwarts letter, you must not tell anyone what you are.” Severus had asked why. Surely not everyone was like his father? Not everyone was against that which was seen as ‘freakish’? “Just like how your father hates the strange and magical, the magical world hates people like us. Never give way to who you are, Severus. They’re terrible people who look down on anyone who isn’t like them. They dislike anyone who isn't pure.” Severus had nodded, promising to keep his secrets his and his mother, frail and sickly gave him a relieved smile.

Severus Snape was not sickly by choice. Nor were his physical attributes. Severus stood tall at five-foot-ten with thin lanky black hair that perpetually shielded his dark brown eyes from those looking at him. Adorning the center of his face sat a crooked nose, which many had nastily made fun of. He’d broken it when he was younger and had yet to correct it. He had thought about fixing it time and time again but the lack of funds and his need for school equipment _always_ won in the end. He didn’t think it was that bad, either. Certainly, his mother had lovingly placed a sweet kiss upon his hooked nose and told him truthfully that it added character. _“Who would want a man who looked perfect top to bottom? Boring, that is. Your uniqueness brings color to an exceedingly boring world.”_ And although he could forget the crooked nose, he absolutely couldn’t forget the downward turn that his skin had taken. It had once been healthy, fair in color and not a blemish to be seen. And while there still was no cosmetic blemish to mark his delicate skin, it was very pallid with grey undertones.

Lily Evans had constantly asked if he was okay during their shared childhood and while he soothed her worries, he could tell she still thought that something wasn’t quite right with him. She knew that his home life left much to be desired and took care to invite him to sleepovers every so often and while Severus was grateful for it, he was smart enough to know his presence caused unrest in the Evans household. What Lily didn’t know, however, was that Severus Tobias Snape was a werewolf. Bitten by a flea riddled mutt, he was sure, although he was much too young to remember the face of his attacker during such a traumatic event, he did remember that he'd been with his mother when it happened and he remembered her crying into her kerchief at Saint Mungo’s, she looked grief-stricken with messy black hair and mascara trailing down smooth cheeks. He’d held her hand and she’d cried harder, bringing him into a tender hug, shushing him when he in return started to tremble. _“It’s okay Sev,”_ She said to him, tucking a stray hair behind his ear. _“You’ll be okay. I love you, don’t you ever forget that.”_

She had tried to hide his ailment from his unforgiving father, and she did for a time. She’d make up an excuse on the days of the full moons and then hide him away until the light of dawn broke and he was back to being her loving little boy. She did her job, she protected Severus, loved him when no one else did. He had been only eight when his father finally discovered what he was, he had been only eight when his father opened that door and let Severus run and while Severus didn’t harm his father, he did harm his mother. His teeth had sunk into the tender flesh of Eileen’s thigh and she cried. _“Severus!”_ She had said, eyes wide and knowing. _“Severus, what have you done!”_ He hadn’t been in his right mind then, having already transformed and although he was only a pup, he still held the disease within his salvia.

When Severus came to, he was horrified. He had cried and begged for his mother’s forgiveness and she smiled at him, running thin fingers through her son’s healthy thick hair. “I’m not mad, Severus. I could never be mad at you.” And the boy had heaved a great sigh of relief. He hadn’t wanted to lose his mother, not when she was the only one left. The only person who loved him unconditionally, even when knowing what he was. His heart had soared days later because he had thought that finally, _finally_ , he wouldn’t be alone. Not anymore. He’d have his mother by his side and he wouldn’t have to transform alone, aching with the pain of each transformation. His father had whipped him a day later, disgust evident in his beady eyes. _“Hands to the wall,”_ He said, he smelled of liquor and cheap tobacco. _“Father, please.”_ Begged Severus. It had gone unnoticed and Severus clenched his eyes shut. He could hear the familiar sound of his father’s belt unbuckling, the metal buckle clashing against the floor almost sounded loud against Severus’ sensitive ears. He flinched. _“The wall.”_ Demanded his father, his tone brooking no room for argument lest he got a worse punishment than that. With shaky legs Severus stood, tumbling against the bedroom wall. He hands pressed down against the familiar imprints stained against the walls wallpaper. He heard it before he felt it and prepared for the sting of the leather against his skin, but that didn’t come. He let out a cry of surprise as metal dug into the flesh of his back, he pressed his body against the wall, back somewhat hidden from his abuser. _“Boy,”_ Hissed Tobias, He pushed Severus back against the wall, exposing his scarred back, bleeding with one long strip that went from shoulder to hip. _“If you move again,”_ He threatened, voice slurring but still every bit intimidating. Ten lashes. His father usually stopped at ten lashes but this time was different, he knew. The metal buckle had never been introduced until that moment. The punishment had lasted through the night. Tobias had stopped at twenty lashes and moved on to alternative punishments. Severus barely paid attention, too hazy from the pain and blood loss. Tobias left Severus on his bedroom floor that morning and the boy fell into unconsciousness throughout the day.  

When the light started to dim in his barren bedroom, he knew he slept the day away. The cuts on his back had long since stopped bleeding and started crusting over uncomfortably. He fell unconscious again soon after, only to awake yet again to his body in a much comfortable position. He’d been carried to his bed by his mother. His back no longer itched from the dry blood and Severus suspected his mother cleaned those too. He sighed, blinking blearily into the darkness of his own room. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d assume it was nearing morning. Daylight had yet to break through the clouds of the sky and the house was uncomfortably still, too quiet for such an old house like theirs. He’d assumed his mother was probably sleeping and his father at the pub down the road, drinking away his disappointment at having a son like Severus Snape. He moved to roll over only to flinch furiously, a hiss never quiet leaving his lips yet still waiting for a chance to make an appearance. Things had changed in the household, he knew. Nothing would ever be the same and the punishment that was dealt to him showed him just as much. 


	2. Broken Bonds

He was a freak, a monster. His father regularly reminded him of that. He was fifteen now, his mother long since passed. She’d been ill since her twenty-fifth transformation. He knew she tried to hide such things from Tobias. The man was stern and unflinchingly normal. Hated the word ‘magic’ and despised anything odd or different, not that Tobias was much of an upstanding citizen, mind you. He was a recluse, a drunkard who beat on his son and abused his wife. She’d taken to suppressing her magic, only ever using it to heal her sons’ ailments at the tender hands of his father and their home.  

Severus had begun to think that his mothers magic was fighting the curse. She looked ill all the time, less lively. She smiled less and spoke every so often and only to Severus himself. She’d try to soothe his frazzled nerves and insist she was doing fine, but he knew that she wasn’t. She’d do anything to keep her husband, anything to hide the disease her son had gifted her. It wasn’t until she died and Tobias turned to him that he finally received answers to his mothers’ death. _“She loved you!”_ He all but yelled, eyes glassy and full with anguish. _“She loved you! And you didn’t deserve that love!”_ He spat. He was only ten at the time, but he knew what his father had done. He’d poisoned her, killed her. Gave her a fate worse than death. She suffered, he knew. Because now he suffered too. With her gone, it was only Severus and Tobias. Tobias who knew about his monthly transformations. Tobias who knew one trick to suppress the wolf within the human. He’d been poisoning her, now him, with undiluted Wolfsbane. Not so much that it would’ve killed her within days, no, but just enough to leave her perpetually sick, dying slowly within each passing day.

 _“_ _I will_ not _have a monster under_ my _roof.”_ Severus wanted to sneer. _“Fine,”_ he wanted to say. _“I’ll find somewhere else to go.”_ But he knew there was no place such as that. He’d cherished his time with his mother and all the wisdom that she had to give. She’d sat him down one day, less than two years before he’d get his letter to Hogwarts. She’d explained why they couldn’t leave. _“There’s nowhere to go, Sev.”_ She spoke, holding his hand. _“When you get your letter, the Hogwarts letter, you must not tell anyone what you are.”_ Severus had asked why. Surely not everyone was like his father? Not everyone was against that which was seen as ‘freakish’? _“Just like how your father hates the strange and magical, the magical world hates people like us. Never give way to who you are, Severus. They’re terrible people who look down on anyone who isn’t like them. They dislike anyone who isn't pure.”_ Severus had nodded, promising to keep his secrets his and his mother, frail and sickly gave him a relieved smile. She had always worried about his health, his safety. Severus even suspected that she was the only reason Tobias hadn’t started dosing him with Wolfsbane until she died; above all else her love for Severus Snape remained strong and steady, had it come down to it, she would’ve taken him and left his father to drown in the booze he always seemed to prefer over the family waiting for him at home.

By the time Severus got his Hogwarts letter and sat in tattered muggle clothing on the train, the poison started to take effect and his healthy appearance diminished day by day. Lily had constantly brought his health up, urging him to seek medical help. And although Severus would’ve loved to, he couldn’t. She’d begged for answers and each time Severus remained as tight-lipped as always. Soon enough, she got used to his sallow appearance, only shooting him worried looks when he politely refused a plate of food or retched up the contents that he did manage to force down. He learned to hide the other symptoms quite well. Numbness, light-headedness, headaches, motor weakness… He blamed most on being clumsy and Lily had accepted that excuse. She’d known him before his father started to dose him, even before he was bitten. And while he wasn’t graceless totally, he did have his moments. So, when his right leg gave way and he stumbled to the ground, Lily had simply rolled her eyes at him with a fond smile plastered on her bow-shaped lips. _“You okay Sev?”_ She’d ask as she helped him up, and he’d always grunt, heartbeat manic, praying to any god or deity listening that today, _today_ wouldn’t be the day where he became paralyzed, lost motor function completely. That deity always seemed to be listening because the numbness left as quick as it came and he was always on his feet in no time, a pink tint dusting across his cheeks as he dusted himself off. _“I’m fine Lily.”_ He reassured.  

He’d met James Potter and his ragtag team of misfits the same day he’d left from school. They'd sneered at him and teased him as if he were the gum under their shoe and Severus sneered right back, not one for backing down and hiding away once the going got tough. Lily, red-faced and fed up with the obnoxious boys, threw them out without so much as a 'good riddance'. She wasn't one for sitting back either. He had thought he’d finally get peace after they left. Being away from his father was both a blessing and a curse and while he was able to stop talking Wolfsbane, he found that he couldn’t. Perhaps it was because he’d been forced to take it so long, or because he felt like he’d deserve this form of punishment, both would be equally correct but another assumption was also correct. Perhaps Severus Snape wanted to die. He had nothing to live for in a world that didn’t seem to want him. His mother, loving and sweet, had passed away and while Eileen tried to assuage his fears and his guilt when she was alive, he knew he was the reason she died. He did bite her, after all. He was the reason his father started the doses, the reason she became so frail, the reason she stopped giving him those smiles so full of love and affection he so desperately missed. While Lily did hold some fondness for him, she didn’t love him. Not like his mother did. Not like how he loved her. She thought he was just a boy who followed her around, a boy who taught her all that she knew about Hogwarts and magic, he was sure. He loved her like she was his very own blood, a sister he never had, perhaps even a twin. His soulmate in all but romance. But it had gone downhill since the sorting, he’d been sent to Slytherin and she Gryffindor. She started to pull away from him and by the time James and his friends had cast Levicorpus on him, he had been a different boy. The wolf in him was constantly on the fence, paranoid and alert. It wanted to fight, to attack and he knew it was because of the poison. A wolf was the predator, not the prey. It was being attacked constantly, both from external and internal forces and it felt cornered, trapped. Neither of which was good.

Lily had stepped in, trying to defuse the situation and Sirius jeered at Severus. “You’re lucky Evan’s was here, Snivellus—” Severus bared his teeth, “I don’t need help from filthy little mudbloods like her!” He’d seen Lily stiffen from the corner of his eyes, features blank but eyes stricken. He’d gathered his items up and pushed through the crowd before James could open his mouth and defend her honor. “Fine!” He heard her yell, “See if I ever help you again!” His heart hurt and he had regretted what he said the instant he’d found a place to hide. Even without the full moon in effect, his wolf was tearing beneath his skin. He fell to his knees, huddled behind a bronze knight. Is this how his mother felt in her final days? Constantly aching, wishing for the pain to end? Was her wolf raging within her too? Was it fighting against the lunar cycle like his was? Bony fingers raked through greasy hair, scratching against his scalp. He smelled blood moments later and winced at the stinging sensation he'd received in turn. The full moon was next week and although he felt the wolf ready to dig itself out of its human confinements, it shouldn’t have been making appearances at all. Was this the poison doing it? Certainly, his mother had died far quicker than he currently was, but he hadn’t noticed anything unordinary about his mother, other than her sick visage. 

His bond with the wolf had been severed, both being two different entities housed in the same body. They’d stopped being one when his father forced him to take his first dose of Wolfsbane. Had the connection still been strong, he’d have his answer in an instant. The wolf refused to talk to him, to acknowledge him. He knew the wolf hated him, despised him even. He was killing them willingly, after all. He’d missed him, in a way. Besides his mother, the mutt had been his only other companion in the utterly dreadful world he’d been forced to live in. He should stop taking it, if not for himself, then surely for the wolf who was even too weak to run? But no, he’d refused. He deserved it. He killed his mother and her wolf, it was only fair he’d kill his wolf and himself as retribution, a twisted sense of justice, he supposed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it sucks, my dudes.


	3. Hurricane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a lot shorter, but I wanted to be sadistic and post it anyway.

He’d been getting progressively worse as the days passed on. If it wasn’t his wolf, it was the poison eating away at his organs. He’d gained a limp by Wednesday and by Friday, he’d been the owner of his very own stutter. His arm was perpetually numb and he’d only been relieved to note that it wasn’t his wand arm. Even his wolf was worryingly quiet. All in all, Severus was starting to become quite panicked. The day before the full moon, he’d contemplated spilling his secret. Sure, he’d wanted to die. But he didn’t want his wolf to _leave_ _him_ all _alone_. What if his father succeeded in killing it? Ridding it from his body as he did to his own wife’s? He’d worked himself up into a frenzy to the point where Severus had begun to have a panic attack because surely, _surely_ if the wolf was still okay, it’d be battering against the confinements of his counterpart, demanding to be let free, wouldn’t it? It had never been this quiet before the full moon and it unnerved him. But he comforted himself with the fact that surely if the cure was as simple as that, the Ministry would have had found it by now, wouldn’t they? No, the wolf was probably just tired. Preparing for its release tomorrow, just like every full moon. He only had to wait until tomorrow night and then he’d feel the familiar ache of his transformation and he’d be just _fine_. 

Only it didn’t come. He waited and waited and waited but the wolf didn’t come and something sick settled in Severus’ stomach, twisting uncomfortably. Clenching his jaw, he grabbed hold of a loose piece of wood on the wall nearby and pulled himself up; he was much too weak to stand on his own and he began to stumble blearily into the light of a new morning. It’d rained that night, he noticed. The smell of petrichor still hung in the air. It smelled heavenly and felt even better against his burning skin. His left leg gave out for a moment and he jerked to a stop, stumbling to the floor messily as a cry of pain split past his cracked lips. He didn’t see the eyes staring at him. He didn’t hear his name leap from one of the group members' lips. He didn’t notice anything because he couldn’t _see_ or _hear_. His heart thumped against his chest widely and a look of fear slipped on his face as he moved to stand, only he couldn’t. He felt numb all over but his chest, his chest _burned_. He felt frantic hands grip his body and he flinched against the cool ground. They turned him over but he still couldn’t see, still couldn’t hear. The hands felt rough and callous against his delicate skin. A shaky hiss left his lips and he felt the very same hands grasp his jaw. _“Don’t tell,”_ he mouthed. _“Don’t tell.”_ The light started fading and Severus belatedly realized he was closing his eyes. He was _tired_. He was so tired. He felt the hands clutching at his shoulders once, shaking him thrice, and then letting him go only to feel a cool breeze brushing against his sweaty skin. Had someone ran to get help? Too late, Severus knew. It was far too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it sucks, my dudes.  
> Also, should my next chapter actually be James' point of view? Comment yes or no! I'd love some imput.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it sucks, my dudes.


End file.
